Monday, 11 March 2013

Film enthusiasts living in Boston may experience a Groundhog
Day moment today as work starts on the town’s Market Place.

Despite all the warnings before, during and since, the £2
million project went ahead regardless, and only now is it starting to dawn on
the powers that be that maybe for once the public was right and they were
wrong.

A raft of improvements is due to start today and last for
six weeks – following “feedback and assessment.”

Perhaps the most important of these will be better marking of
parking spaces – to ease many of the problems which have led to drivers being
ticketed – in some cases, it is suggested, unfairly.

In the meantime, the work will mean a temporary reduction in
parking at certain times – which may well increase confusion rather than the
reverse.

If there are no delays, shoppers and local businesses could
get a few weeks’ breathing space before work starts to replace St Botolph’s
Footbridge, which will entail a route march for arrivals at the bus station to get
into town.

Still, as we are constantly assured by the great and the good –
it’ll all be worth it in the end, and they, of course, are never wrong.

The work will be carried out against the counterpoint of the
ceaseless noise, inconvenience, pollution and creeping damage to the road
surface of the Into Town bus service.

The Lincolnshire County Council subsidy for this runs out in
June – and the debate has already begun about the possibility of making some
changes if it is to continue.

It is fair to say that no one opposes the service – what
they are against
is its use of Strait Bargate as a rat run.

The service operators, Brylaine, say the Strait Bargate
route is justified because the buses cannot turn round at either the Post
Office or the Market Place end.

But looking at the map of the route, we cannot accept the
argument that the buses are unable to retrace their route rather than go through
Strait Bargate.

We know that many councillors are strongly opposed to the
buses using an area supposedly reserved for pedestrians – including the cabinet
member responsible for Boston Town Centre, Councillor Derek Richmond.

Last week, a fellow cabinet member, Councillor Mike Gilbert,
also backed the idea of an alternative route – but then tried to muddy the
waters of the debate.

He began by claiming that – “like many issues this one too
has nothing to do with Boston Borough being a Lincolnshire County Council and
Brylaine buses matter.”

He accepted that the issue was an emotive one – but then
came up with “some facts” for consideration.

He cited a figure of 26,000 journeys a month – many made by elderly and
disabled passengers.

“If it were to cease because a change in route were forced
upon the operator so as to avoid Narrow (sic)
Bargate, thus making the service unprofitable, these would be the people most
affected. As of course would be the five bus drivers who would be unemployed
and who would have been employed by a private company at no cost to the council
tax payer.

“If we think about it more thoroughly is this really what we
want, a lack of transport for disabled and elderly people, unemployment for
local workers, all because we pressurise our councillors into demanding an end
to buses through Narrow (sic) Bargate
because we find it at worst a bit irritating.”

We would have expected better of Councillor Gilbert than to
try to pull the wool over our eyes in this way.

We’ll have to take his word about the passenger figures, as they
are seldom published.

But a service that carries 26,000 passengers a month for six
days a week over three routes with 12 journeys a day on each, averages around 15
passengers each way.

When figures were presented in the early days of the
service, it emerged that almost 50% of passengers held concessionary bus passes
– which means that they are over sixty and nothing more – but their fare is
paid for them by the county council, which must help profitability.

As far as Councillor Gilbert’s playing of the disability card
is concerned, we assume that people heading into town are not so seriously
disabled that they cannot get around the shops.

So unless they remain in the self-same spot as that on which
they alighted, they are surely capable of covering the distance from one end of
Strait Bargate to the other if the buses were no longer routed through it.

We wonder whether Councillor Gilbert has any evidence to
support his claim that if the service were discontinued the drivers would be
dismissed? If so, we would like to see it.

At the last elections, all the competing parties – except for
the Boston Bypass Independents, who foisted the route upon us – said that whilst
the service was a good thing, the route was not.

And to call the intrusion of the buses “a bit irritating” is a misstatement that
beggars belief.

Councillor Gilbert tells us that the issue has nothing to do
with Boston Borough Council – which is a handy cop out.

But is he seriously saying that if almost every Boston
borough councillor voted for a change of route that the County Council and Messrs
Brylaine would ignore them?

Unfortunately the answer to that is probably yes, but it
would be interesting to raise the question and find out the answer.

Somewhat naively, Councillor Gilbert declares that he is “relieved
that with an
open mind both Lincolnshire County Council and Brylaine the bus
operator are looking at alternative routes …”

Are they really?

Questions were raised before the route began about the choice
of Brylaine, and at the recent “briefing” of borough councillors the company’s
operations director said no changes would be made to the service, emphasising: “There
is definitely
no intention on our part to alter the route at all and no immediate
plans to do anything other than keep it as it is. In short – it ain’t bust so
we aren’t going to fix it.”

Mind you, to a Boston Borough Council Tory, that qualifies
as an “open mind,” we suppose.

And of course, the Conservatives were in opposition when they
criticised the route.Now that they are
in power and under the thumb of County Hall, their vote may well be quite different.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com
Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if
requested.

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About the author

is written and edited by retired Lincolnshire born writer and broadcaster Malcolm Swire, who was brought up in London, where he began his career in journalism.
In the 1960s he joined the Boston Standard before returning to London to write for the UK’s national news agency, the Press Association – then based in Fleet Street.
He returned to Lincolnshire –where his family history goes back more than a century – in various public relations roles, before becoming a founder member of BBC Radio Lincolnshire,where he created the station's Go for Gold appeal,which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for local charities.
Over the years, he read the news, presented programmes and retired from the BBC as the station's Programme Organiser and Deputy Managing Editor.
He started the Boston Eye blog in February 2007 and has vowed to continue until Boston Borough Council's leadership is all that it should be!
He has dug in for a long wait!